Executive Coaching for High-Performance Leaders: Why Traditional Approaches Fail (And What Actually Works)
If you’re searching for executive coaching, you’ve probably discovered that most approaches don’t work for leaders from high-performing backgrounds. Here’s why, and what does.
If you’re searching for executive coaching, you’ve probably discovered that most approaches don’t work for leaders from high-performing backgrounds. Here’s why, and what does.
After 30 years of running businesses, including as an interim CEO in turnaround situations and serving as Chair, I’ve learned something that transformed how I approach working with senior leaders: the executive coaching industry fundamentally misunderstands what high-performing leaders actually need.
If you’re a CEO, Managing Director, or senior leader searching for executive coaching, you know you need something. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You’ve probably encountered the same frustrating pattern: coaches who focus on soft skills, personal development, and work-life balance strategies that completely miss the mark for someone from your background.
The Turning Point: From CEO to Strategic Advisor
The limitations of applying maximum effort became clear to me in an unexpected place: the golf course. 30 years prior, because all business people play golf, right? I approached my first game with intense focus, gave it everything, played one round, and walked away in frustration. The harder I tried, the worse it got. I didn’t go back for 30 years, and only picked up a club because I wanted an easy way to be with my grown up son in a relaxed environment. It was then that I discovered something important: sustained high performance requires different rules.
This revelation changed everything about how I work with senior leaders. This isn’t about CEO coaching or personal development. It’s about time and space to think clearly, decide confidently, and execute effectively when complexity builds. This is the kind of operational support that traditional coaching approaches aren’t designed to provide.
The Real Problem: Operational Overload, Not Emotional Weakness
Why Traditional Executive Coaching Fails High-Performance Leaders
The CEOs, Managing Directors, and senior leadership teams I work with typically come from high-performing backgrounds. They’ve worked hard and given it everything to build a successful career by applying a principle of maximum effort, and that approach served them well in their 30s, even their 50s when they were in the build phase. But now they’re trying to apply that same intensity across their business while they also have other commitments and priorities which drain the battery. They still apply 100%, but there are other priorities which require equal intensity and they’re discovering it’s simply not sustainable at this level of responsibility.
Here’s where traditional executive coaching goes wrong, and why it fundamentally misunderstands what senior leaders actually need:
Why Traditional Coaching Misses the Mark
The Credibility Gap
Most executive coaches come from training, HR, or development backgrounds. At best they may have been a “head of” or divisional director, but they’ve never carried ultimate P&L responsibility, faced covenant pressures, or made decisions affecting hundreds of jobs.
Treating Symptoms, Not Business Systems
I’ve had senior clients whose boards have told them they need coaching because they’re “too tight and wound up.” The board’s diagnosis is often correct. These leaders are stressed, reactive, and not operating at their best.
CEOs and MDs are almost always natural winners. They know there’s an issue and they generally know what they need to fix. The problem I find (because I’ve been there) is creating the time and space to think through the situation and craft a strategy to improve it. They don’t need someone to tell them what’s wrong or teach them leadership skills. They need operational support to step back from the chaos and address the systems causing the pressure.
Here’s how intelligent, successful executives get sidetracked: they know something needs to change, they feel “off,” so they reach for feel-good fixes. “I haven’t been sleeping well, I feel a little unsure of myself lately. I must need to be more resilient. Maybe I need a fitness regime, that’ll make me feel better.”
But they’re not sleeping well because they have 47 decisions backed up and no clear framework for prioritising them. They feel unsure because they’re trying to apply maximum effort to everything. So they embark on 5am gym sessions and resilience workshops while the real problem (operational complexity consuming their mental bandwidth) remains unaddressed.
The Limitations of Traditional Coaching Aren’t About the Coach
Executive Coaching Focuses on Personal Development
Traditional executive coaching emphasises emotional intelligence, communication styles, and work-life balance strategies. High-performing leaders already understand these concepts. What they need are practical systems for applying their existing capabilities when business complexity intensifies.
Here’s what I’ve learned through strategic advisory work with senior leaders: when you solve the business systems problem, the stress naturally reduces. Leaders aren’t wound up because they have poor emotional regulation. They’re wound up because they’re fighting fires constantly, lack clarity on what actually matters, and don’t have space for strategic thinking.
The principles that create high-performing individual success don’t automatically translate to sustainable organisational leadership when the leader becomes the bottleneck for every decision. In fact, they often work against effective business systems.
CEO Strategic Coaching: A Practical Alternative
What Executive Coaching Is (And What It Isn’t)
There are some exceptional practitioners doing outstanding work in mindset and resilience coaching. When done well by experienced professionals, this type of support is invaluable for leaders facing intense pressure. For example, Simon Jeffries, co-founder of The Natural Edge and former Royal Marine Commando and SBS operator, offers targeted support for leaders dealing with relentless pressure, providing practical, neuroscience-informed coaching that delivers clarity, focus, and sustainable execution. This kind of specialist resilience work is essential for leaders operating in high-stakes environments. www.thenaturaledge.com
To be clear, this isn’t executive coaching in the HR sense. It’s not a warm-fuzzy, me-centred journey. It’s precise, operational, and outcome-driven. It focuses on hard skills like decision discipline, stress-response conditioning, and high-stakes prioritisation, not endlessly reflecting on emotional states.
Think of it like a professional sports environment. Your goalkeeping coach doesn’t ask the keeper “how does that make you feel?” after conceding. They analyse positioning, footwork, follow-through and adjust accordingly. That’s what real performance-oriented coaching looks like in executive life: situational, specific, and relentlessly focused on the next challenge or opportunity.
What CEO Strategic Coaching Looks Like in Practice
CEO Strategic Coaching: A Complementary Approach
These approaches complement rather than compete with strategic operational support. I don’t do CEO coaching in the conventional sense. I provide CEO Strategic Coaching, which isn’t coaching in the traditional sense. It’s not about self-actualisation or guided introspection. It’s a structured, diagnostic working session that helps CEOs lead more effectively by making better commercial and operational decisions.
The focus is on what’s actually happening in the business and what isn’t.
CEO Strategic Coaching works differently. It tackles motivation, morale, and team stability through operational fixes rather than endless reflection. Whether you’re facing turnaround pressure, rapid growth challenges, market volatility, or competitive threats, the approach is diagnostic and practical.
We look at where performance is being lost, what’s distracting leadership energy, and what’s unclear, overcomplicated, or left to chance. Sales execution, cost drivers, organisational drag, team dynamics, leadership rhythm. Whatever is affecting outcomes, we pull it apart and address it.
This isn’t theory. I’ve developed these skills by serving as an operational CEO in turnaround situations, working inside pressured businesses where results can’t wait and team morale is critical to survival. My background in stressed leadership roles has developed both a deep theoretical understanding of leadership, motivation and morale, and the practical application of these principles when everything is on the line. That experience has trained me to cut to the quick, quickly. It’s helped me recognise patterns, identify the real levers, and focus leaders on what matters most without damaging the core of the business.
I’ve learned to be outcome-focused and people-oriented—not just because the theory says so, but because I’ve seen what works when teams are under genuine pressure and sustainable performance matters.
Bridging the Gap Between CEO and Chair
We’re not here to blow things up. We’re here to restore clarity and control, maintain capability, and protect team morale so the business moves forward with focus and resilience, not just urgency.
This is part commercial review, part decision-support, part operational troubleshooting. But above all, it’s a chance for the CEO to think clearly and test ideas with someone who understands the realities of operational leadership and has no stake in internal politics.
This isn’t a replacement for the Chair. In fact, it makes the Chair relationship stronger. By working through operational noise, clarifying decision logic, and testing trade-offs before they reach the boardroom, this coaching helps CEOs act with greater confidence and composure.
Having served as both CEO and Chair, I understand this dynamic from both sides. This experience helps me be an effective Chair when that’s the role required, and equally helps me support CEOs in preparing for and managing their board relationships more effectively.
Most Chairs don’t have the bandwidth to be involved in the day-to-day implications of strategic execution, and nor should they. This support bridges that gap, helping CEOs convert board direction into practical leadership.
A Trusted Operational Ally, Not a Therapist
It’s rare to find an FD or CFO who can explore the full breadth of operational issues in a truly neutral way. And peers like the COO, Sales Director or CCO, while valuable, often bring functional bias or competing priorities.
My role is to act as a trusted, neutral advisor. A critical friend with operational depth, commercial range, and no internal agenda. Someone who’s been in the chair, understands the pressure, and can help leaders focus on what actually shifts performance.
The conversation is grounded, fast-moving, and geared around real choices: Where are the levers? What’s not working? What are the trade-offs? How do we drive the right behaviours and results?
This absolutely includes leadership presence, communication effectiveness, and team motivation—but we tackle these through operational improvements rather than psychological exploration. Fix the underlying business issues that create stress and confusion, and you often solve the morale problems at the same time.
It’s Not About Showing Up Better—It’s About Running the Business Better
The best outcomes often come from leaders having access to different types of support—whether that’s resilience coaching, peer groups, or strategic operational guidance, depending on what their situation demands.
It’s not about helping you show up better in meetings. It’s about helping you run the business better.
Moving Beyond Executive Coaching
The hardest part of moving from high-performing individual success to sustainable leadership isn’t learning new skills. It’s building systems that channel your competitive drive effectively when business complexity increases.
My golf experience taught me this viscerally. The “try harder” mindset that served me well in my early career actually prevented me from learning a skill that requires controlled power and strategic thinking.
Executive leadership is the same. It requires channelling your competitive drive through business systems that create clarity and focus rather than trying to apply maximum effort to every operational detail.
